Immigrant Integration

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Immigrant Integration

Immigrant integration is the process of economic mobility and social inclusion for newcomers and their children. As such, integration touches upon the institutions and mechanisms that promote development and growth within society, including early childhood care; elementary, postsecondary, and adult education systems; workforce development; health care; provision of government services to communities with linguistic diversity; and more. Successful integration builds communities that are stronger economically and more inclusive socially and culturally.

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The U.S. immigrant population—estimated at 40.8 million in 2012 — is the nation’s historical numerical high, and it is also the largest foreign-born population in the world. About 20 percent of all international migrants reside in the United States, even as the country accounts for less than 5 percent of global population. This article presents the latest, most sought-after data on immigrants in the United States—by origin, residence, legal status, deportations, languages spoken, and more—in one easy-to-use resource.

Internal migration spurred primarily by employment and marriage helps shape the economic, social, and political life of India’s sending and receiving regions. Labor migrants face myriad challenges, including restricted access to basic needs such as identity documentation and social entitlements. This article describes the barriers to integration that labor migrants face, and details the policy environment surrounding their integration challenges.

This article explores the underlying causes of the May 2013 riots across several Stockholm suburbs that have high proportions of foreign-born residents, and asks whether rapid increases in the size of Sweden's immigrant population or the government's integration efforts played a central role.

This article examines common challenges and factors influencing the development of local labor-market integration initiatives targeting immigrant youth, based on four city case studies conducted in the United States and the European Union.

Muslim integration is one of the most contentious issues in the immigration debate in Europe, and one that gets to the heart of public anxieties about immigration. This article explores public perception toward Muslims in Western Europe and the array of integration policies that countries in the region have adopted during the past several years.

A day-long conference in Brussels, co-sponsored by the International Labour Office and the European Commision’s Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs, and Inclusion, where panelists discuss the dynamics by which migrants get stuck in low-skilled work, and the role of training and employment services in helping them progress in their occupations.

This conference, keynoted by USCIS Director León Rodríguez, featured panels on local immigrant integration policies; expected executive action on immigration; the treatment of unaccompanied children from Central America; and innovations in government-funded legal counsel and accelerated court cases.

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A webinar examining the outreach and initiatives by educational institutions and other community stakeholders seeking to support the education and training success of grantees of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

A day-long conference in Brussels, co-sponsored by the International Labour Office and the European Commision’s Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs, and Inclusion, where panelists discuss the dynamics by which migrants get stuck in low-skilled work, and the role of training and employment services in helping them progress in their occupations.

This conference, keynoted by USCIS Director León Rodríguez, featured panels on local immigrant integration policies; expected executive action on immigration; the treatment of unaccompanied children from Central America; and innovations in government-funded legal counsel and accelerated court cases.

A discussion and report release on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, how its educational requirements may be impacting application rates, and recommendations for overcoming the education-success challenges that key subgroups of DACA-DREAM youth face.

A discussion and report release on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, how its educational requirements may be impacting application rates, and recommendations for overcoming the education-success challenges that key subgroups of DACA-DREAM youth face.

This webinar covers key findings from MPI's report about the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) initiative and eligible populations two years after its implementation, and also introduces MPI's data tool that provides national and state-level estimates of the current and potentially eligible DACA populations, as well as detailed profiles for the U.S. and 25 states.

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Recent Activity

Youth of a migrant background are over-represented among those who leave school early in the European Union. This policy brief discusses empirical findings, theoretical insights, and promising measures that may inform further policy action to address the disproportionately high level of early school leaving among students with a migrant background, which results from socioeconomic and other factors.

A number of actors outside the formal educational context, including parents, peers, and other community members, can play an important role in the social and educational development of migrant children. This policy brief reviews current measures to promote the integration of migrant students around Europe, focusing on those initiatives that include the family and community as part of the educational process.

A report release examining PIAAC data on the skills of U.S. immigrant adults and whether there is a gap with native-born adults, and discussion of how these skills relate to key immigrant integration outcomes such as employment, income, access to training, and health.

Immigrant adults in the United States lag their native-born peers in literacy, numeracy, and problem-solving skills, with resulting effects on their income, employment, education, and health, according to MPI analysis of U.S. scores on the 2012 Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). The findings, which reveal wide ethnic and racial gaps in scoring, underscore deep U.S. social inequalities.

Employment-oriented mentoring is increasingly recognized in Europe as a tool for advancing the labor market integration of disadvantaged individuals, including immigrants. This report highlights a number of relevant one-on-one mentoring practices in Europe and North America, focusing on the role of different initiators and stakeholders, forms of collaboration, methods, and target groups.

A webinar showcasing MPI's data profiles of unauthorized immigrants in the 94 U.S. counties with the largest such populations, as well as the implications of the data for implementation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) programs.

A webinar examining the outreach and initiatives by educational institutions and other community stakeholders seeking to support the education and training success of grantees of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

Since its launch in 2012, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program has intertwined immigration policy and the education and training fields in an unprecedented way. Based on fieldwork in seven states, this report examines the ways in which local educational institutions, legal service providers, and immigrant youth advocates have responded to the first phase of DACA, as well as the program's effects on students' educational and career aspirations.